Dan Rosenthal hett schreven: There's nothing wrong with it except that it does not meet the requirements of the language proposal policy for new projects (<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_proposal_policy>). That policy asks for native speakers. That is nonsense, imho, but that's the text of the policy. Slomox Marcus Buck

On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 10:26 PM, Ilario Valdelli &lt;valdelli(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: There are Old Greek speakers all over the world. But, there are no native speakers of both; which is crucial for a new language edition of a Wikimedia project. So, according to that, there will be no Latin Wikinews nor Old Greek Wikipedia. (Or, if something is different, someone from LangCom should say something.)

you are wrong, old greek is used as official language of the eastern greek ortodoxe church. its greek is the koine dialect with neologism for new things and concepts.   c.m.l --- On Wed, 9/3/08, Thomas Dalton &lt;thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: From: Thomas Dalton &lt;thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com&gt; Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] STOP DOUBLE STANDARD!!! OR HYPOCRESY!!! To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" &lt;foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 8:41 PM 2008/9/3 Milos Rancic &lt;millosh(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: &lt;valdelli(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: There are people all over the world than *can* speak Old Greek, but does anyone actually do so routinely? As far as I know, people speak it in order to learn it so they might read historical things written in it. Latin is used by the Vatican as an official language on a regular basis. I suppose the key thing is that Latin is still written today, Greek is just read. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

It is. This has been hashed and rehashed... 2008/9/3 Thomas Dalton &lt;thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com&gt;om>:

"ecclesiastical gree" a strong different pronunciation that classical greek   "it is "polluted" with neologism and a creative use of the "old" languages   and latin is not artificial it is a below of a tradition. it is different than esperanto a language created by a individue.   and it has been writing articles in "ancient greek" (in greece) about modern mathematical and physics topics. it can find in greece public library. --- On Wed, 9/3/08, Ilario Valdelli &lt;valdelli(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: From: Ilario Valdelli &lt;valdelli(a)gmail.com&gt; Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] STOP DOUBLE STANDARD!!! OR HYPOCRESY!!! To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" &lt;foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 9:37 PM I repeat. It's different: Ortodoxe Church can use "old greek", but in this case they use an old language without native speakers, Jewish church uses the Classical Hebrew, but there are no native speakers in Classical Hebrew, Hinduism is still using sanskrit for liturgical purposes, but there are no native speakers in sanskrit. The Ecclesiastic Latin is not the language used in the Bible or in Ancient Rome (the pronunciation for example is strongly different) but it's a language created when the latin was already substituted by "vulgari eloquentia". It has *never* had a native speaker, never. For this reason it's an artificial language (or better an artificial "version" of latin) and for this reason it can have a translation of modern words (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastical_Latin#Language_materials). I cannot think how an "old greek Wikipedia" or a "Classical Hebrew Wikipedia" can translate an article about "spintronics" for example. The difference between Latin and old languages still used in the churches is that Latin has not lose the richness of linguistic registers because, for example, in the XVII century Galileo has written main scientific articles in latin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidereus_Nuncius), more similar to ecclesiastic one that to classical one. Latin is prepared to face different types of topics. Ilario Crazy Lover wrote: ortodoxe church. its greek is the koine dialect with neologism for new things and concepts. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Personally I have translated documents of XVI century written in "ecclesiastic latin" guarded in the Archive of Vatican and no dictionary used in my school was helpful to help me to translate at least the 50% of words. They are intelligible in the main structure, but the trend was to "latinize" popular words instead of to use "classical" ones. Ilario Thomas Dalton wrote:

well, there is "ecclesiastical greek". --- On Wed, 9/3/08, Ilario Valdelli &lt;valdelli(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: From: Ilario Valdelli &lt;valdelli(a)gmail.com&gt; Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] STOP DOUBLE STANDARD!!! OR HYPOCRESY!!! To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" &lt;foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 8:47 PM What I am saying it's different. If it will use "classical" latin language there is no native speakers and "classical" latin language = old greek language. If it will use "ecclesiastic" latin language it's an "artificial" language created by church like "lingua franca" to communicate during eight centuries with the same aims of Esperanto. "Ecclesiastic" latin language = Esperanto <> "classical" latin language. Ilario Milos Rancic wrote: &lt;valdelli(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Illalio, Koine is eccelesiastical language for Orthodox Church, at least in liturgy ... Personally I am equal to found it or not but your argument may do nothing but rage some people. On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 5:51 AM, Ilario Valdelli &lt;valdelli(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: -- KIZU Naoko http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD

On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 2:24 AM, mboverload &lt;mboverloadlister(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: There is a level of usefulness. All ancient languages which the official status in some religion are known by more people than some languages with small number of speakers. Speaking for the Slavic languages, there are more persons who know Old Church Slavonic than Lower Sorbian (just Belgrade University [without Theological Faculty of Serbian Orthodox Church] produces 100-200 persons per year who are able to read OCS and Lower Sorbian has ~14,000 of speakers). BTW, there is no conlang which has such academic background such OCS, Old Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Old Hebrew and similar languages have. This puts those languages immediately behind English, other world languages and regional lingua francas (such Swahili is) as a tool for international communication. And I have one real example for that. Mother of one my friend is from Poland, she was born in late 1930s or so. She moved to Belgrade in, let's say, mid-60s. While she didn't know Serbian well, she communicated with people around her in Polish-Serbian morphology and syntax and Latin lexicon. So, ancient languages used for liturgical purposes (so, Latin, but not Sumerian) are useful even in everyday communication in some cases. Simply, they have strong academic (because, usually, they represent the earliest form of some group of languages) and religious positions. As such, they are known by many people; usually, all over the world. Maybe LangCom should reconsider their status.

Folks, I asked you to use another subject without caps, but only a tiny majority got the message. Thus this thread is now killfiled, sorry... If you need to, use another subject (hint: mike.lifeguard set one up for you...) or find another playground. It's enough. Michael -- Michael Bimmler mbimmler(a)gmail.com

Lars Aronsson wrote: I have a nice quote on that topic “Everyone loses if one language is lost because then a nation and culture lose their memory, and so does the complex tapestry from which the world is woven and which makes the world an exciting place.” Vigdis Finnbogadottir UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Languages

On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 8:41 PM, Dennis During &lt;dcduring(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: If I judge according to your name, you are a native English speaker (sorry if I made a mistake :) ). As someone who is not a native English speaker and as someone who has a fair amount of contacts in non-English world, I may guarantee that not only we have a great support, but we are, actually, a community [and WMF is an organization] with very high reputation (and, not only inside of non-English world). So, according to that, our efforts are valued by others. AFAIK, donations during the fundraising period at the end of the year are increased from year to year. Actually, I think that last year we've got much more, because the previous one we've got one very big donation doubled by some other donor. (If I don't remember well, someone may correct me.) However, we should watch the fundraising period for this year, too.

2008/9/9 David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: To clarify: "You do Wikipedia? Excellent! Are you halfway competent? Excellent! Have some money! My name in the press release? Excellent! Thank you!" It's a start :-) - d.

First of all: native speakers mean that the language is spoke by babies!!!. no babies speak latin or ancient greek.   Artificial or constructed languages are the ones that are invented by someone from scratch. latin will always be considered ancient, even if it is used in modern times, not artificial.   cml.   --- On Wed, 9/3/08, Ilario Valdelli &lt;valdelli(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: From: Ilario Valdelli &lt;valdelli(a)gmail.com&gt; Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] STOP DOUBLE STANDARD!!! OR HYPOCRESY!!! To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" &lt;foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 8:26 PM It's different. There are latin speakers in the Vatican for example. "De facto" (ops... latin) this is not the "classic" latin language but it's a modified language ("ecclesiatic" latin) which can be considered like an artificial language. For this reason it can be compared with the Esperanto and the wikinews can be accepted because: "/If the proposal is for an artificial language such as Esperanto <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto>, it must have a reasonable degree of recognition as determined by discussion". /In any case a community can be present (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin#Modern_use_of_Latin). Ilario Marcus Buck wrote: policy of _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

you don't understand anything. the nab is the policy. if a language is "dead" (no longer native speakers) don't meet the wikimedia language proposal policy. Applying the rules, any latin projects must be reject. It is not admisible that langcom don't apply with equality the rule.   And in other mail i said, Eastern greek ortodoxe church use ancient greek as official language, as language work.   cml --- On Wed, 9/3/08, geni &lt;geniice(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: From: geni &lt;geniice(a)gmail.com&gt; Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] STOP DOUBLE STANDARD!!! OR HYPOCRESY!!! To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" &lt;foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 9:32 PM 2008/9/3 Crazy Lover &lt;always_yours.forever(a)yahoo.com&gt;om>: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Ancient… meet the policy, both. months!!!). latin one. equality the rules? Not double standards because the two are not remotely equivalent. Ancient greek is a fairly typical dead language. It's understood by academics and a few enthusiasts. The corpus of modern work is extremely limited and the general public has little interaction with it. There is some use by a church but it is only slightly above Coptic in that respect. Latin is technically dead yes but that is very much a technicality. It's understood by both a wider set of academics and various catholic church officials. The corpus of modern work is rather extensive with both the official Vatican publications and various other groups producing regular material. Then you have to remember that there are the so called silver surfers online. You don't have to go back that far that every British public school boy and a fair chunk of the grammar school pupils would have had a fair coverage of latin. Then of course there is the pre-VC2 latin rite. Every church going catholic prior to the 60s would have had a high level of interaction with latin. Then there are the various Latin inscriptions on older public buildings and the like. Latin has also done something of a better job of hanging on around the edges. For example in english AD the various legal phrases quotations alea iacta est (and no end of religious stuff Ave maria etc) ancient greek? aside from modern greek kyrie eleison ΙΧΘΥΣ. Deus ex machina is about it in terms of secular stuff. Even a recent popular film hasn't raised "Molōn labe!" to the level of say "Veni, vidi, vici" In short among the dead languages Latin stands apart and cannot be used to support the case of any other. -- geni _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

2008/9/3 Crazy Lover &lt;always_yours.forever(a)yahoo.com&gt;om>: Like all rules it breaks down under extreme conditions. Latin is a very extreme case. Trying to compare ancient greek to it is insulting to the intelligence of this mailing list. Latin being dead is really only a technicality. It has a lot more activity than many live languages. Ancient greek however is a fairly standard dead language similar to say Coptic. Greece has a population of a bit over 11 million. There are over 900 million catholics around. The two are not comparable. The Holy See has direct control over a sovereign state. Greek Orthodox not so much. Realistically you are suggesting we treat a Ring-tailed Lemur in the same manner as a 900 pound gorilla. -- geni

Stop yelling in the subject. John

No, we don't. It seems to be the topic of the year both here and on meta discussions. Cheers Yaroslav

On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 8:07 PM, geni &lt;geniice(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I always thought "dead language" meant the language was no longer changing. Apparently Wikipedia defines it as a language with no native speakers. Checking a few other sources, Wikipedia's definition seems to be the generally accepted one. So...OK...Nevermind...

geni wrote: And trying to say that they are uncomparable is insulting to my intelligence at least. Latin and Ancient Greek are, you admit, used in the same way, and the only difference is the number of speakers. The number of speakers isn't relevant for live languages, so why would it be relevant for dead ones?